Bluefish, by Pat Schmatz

Summary:  Everything changes for thirteen-year-old Travis, a new student who is trying to hide his illiteracy, when he meets a sassy classmate with her own secrets and a remarkable teacher.

Candlewick

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Breaking Stalin’s Nose, by Eugene Yelchin

Summary:  In the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, ten-year-old Sasha idolizes his father, a devoted Communist, but when police take his father away and leave Sasha homeless, he is forced to examine his own perceptions, values, and beliefs.

Henry Holt

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The Cheshire Cheese cat: a Dickens of a Tale, by Carmen Deedy

Summary:  A community of mice and a cheese-loving cat form an unlikely alliance at London’s Cheshire Cheese, an inn where Charles Dickens finds inspiration and Queen Victoria makes an unexpected appearance.

Peachtree

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Dagger Quick, by Brian Eames

Summary:  Twelve-year-old Christopher “Kitto” Wheale, a clubfooted boy seemingly doomed to follow in the boring footsteps of his father as a cooper in seventeenth-century England, finds himself on a dangerous seafaring adventure with his newly discovered uncle, the infamous pirate William Quick.

Simon & Schuster

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Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact, by A. J. Hartley

Summary:  When Darwen moves to Atlanta, Georgia, to live with his aunt, he  discovers an enchanting world through the old mirror hanging in his closet – a world that holds as many dangers as it does wonders.

Razorbill

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The Death of Yorik Mortwell, by Stephen Messer

Summary:  Following his death at the hands of fellow twelve-year-old, Lord Thomas, Yorik returns as a ghost to protect his sister from a similar fate but soon learns of ancient magical beings, both good and evil, who are vying for power at the Estate.

Random House

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The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, by Uma Krishnaswami

Summary:  Eleven-year-old Dini loves movies, and so when she learns that her family is moving to India for two years, her devastation over leaving her best friend in Maryland is tempered by the possibility of meeting her favorite actress, Dolly Singh.

Atheneum

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Heart and Soul: the Story of America and African Americans, by Kadir Nelson

Summary:  An simple introduction to African-American history, from Revolutionary-era slavery up to the election of President Obama.

Balzer + Bray

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The Last Musketeer, by Stuart Gibbs

Summary:  In Paris with his parents to sell family heirlooms, fourteen-year-old Greg Rich suddenly finds himself four hundred years in the past, and is aided by boys who will one day be known as “The Three Musketeers.”

Harper

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A Month of Sundays, by Ruth White

Summary:  In the summer of 1956 while her mother is in Florida searching for a job, fourteen-year-old April Garnet Rose, who has never met her father, stays with her terminally ill aunt in Virginia and accompanies her as she visits different churches, looking for God.

FS&G

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Never Forgotten, by Patricia McKissack

Summary:  In eighteenth-century West Africa, a boy raised by his blacksmith father and the Mother Elements–Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth–is captured and taken to America as a slave.

Schwartz & Wade

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Nicholas St. North and the battle of the Nightmare King, by William Joyce

Summary:  Nicholas St. North, a daredevil swordsman seeking treasure in the fiercely guarded village of Santoff Claussen finds, instead, the great wizard Ombric Shalazar and a battle against the Nightmare King and his evil Fearlings–a battle Nicholas can win only if he finds five other Guardians in time.

Atheneum

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Secrets at Sea, by Richard Peck

Summary:  In 1887, the social-climbing Cranstons voyage from New York to London, where they hope to find a husband for their awkward older daughter, secretly accompanied by Helena and her mouse siblings, for whom the journey is both terrifying and wondrous as they meet an array of titled humans despite their best efforts at remaining hidden.

Dial

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The Underdogs, by Mike Lupica

Summary:  Small but fast twelve-year-old Will Tyler, an avid football player in the down-and-out town of Forbes, Pennsylvania, takes matters into his own hands to try and finance the city’s football team, giving the whole community hope in the process.

Philomel

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Unforgettable, by Loretta Ellsworth

Summary:  When Baxter Green was three years old he developed a condition that causes him to remember absolutely everything, and now that he is fifteen, he and his mother have moved to Minnesota to escape her criminal boyfriend and, Baxter hopes, to reconnect with a girl he has been thinking about since kindergarten.

Walker

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